Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Fundamentals

WAP’s advocacy comes from the WAP Forum, an industry association comprising over 500 members that has developed the de facto standard for wireless information and telephony services on digital mobile phones and other wireless terminals. The WAP Forum is an industry association that supports, gives input, and contributes specifications to the existing standards bodies.^[1] The goal of the WAP Forum is to bring together companies from all segments of the wireless industry value chain to ensure product interoperability and the growth of the wireless market. WAP Forum members represent over 90 percent of the global handset market, including carriers with more than 100 million subscribers, leading infrastructure providers, software developers, and other organizations providing solutions to the wireless industry.^[2]

Skeptics inquire, “Wireless data services have been talked about for a decade. Why will WAP succeed where previous attempts to reach mass markets have failed?” Proponents make the pitch that technology adoption has been slowed by the industry’s lack of standards to make handheld products Internet compatible. WAP provides the de facto open standard for wireless data services. According to proponents, WAP has generated the critical mass for manufacturers, opening up new product and marketing opportunities in the wireless industry. Service providers are behind WAP because with relatively minimal risk and investment, WAP enables operators to decrease churn (people leaving the system to go to another provider) and increase revenues by improving existing, value-added services and offering exciting new informational services.^[3]

WAP has been designed to be as independent as possible from the underlying network technology. Therefore, it will comply with evolving third-generation (3G) standards. WAP will continue to be necessary even with the higher-bandwidth 3G networks. Even as bandwidths increase, the cost of that bandwidth does not fall to zero. These costs result from higher power usage in the terminals, higher costs in the radio sections, greater use of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum, and increased network loading. In addition, the original constraints WAP was designed for — intermittent coverage, small screens, low power consumption, wide scalability over bearers and devices, and one-handed operation — are still valid in 3G networks. Finally, one can expect the bandwidth required by applications to steadily increase. Therefore, there is still a need to optimize the device and network resources for wireless environments. One can expect WAP to optimize support for multimedia applications that continue to be relevant. If WAP is successful in mass markets on 2.5G networks, 3G networks may be needed purely for capacity relief.

The following material is taken from WAP Architecture, Version 12-July-2001, Wireless Application Protocol, Architecture Specification, WAP-210-WAPArch-20010712.^[4]

Scope

WAP is a result of continuous work to define an industry wide specification for developing applications that operate over wireless communication networks. The scope for the WAP Forum is to define a set of specifications to be used by service applications. The wireless market is growing quickly, reaching new customers and providing new services. To enable operators and manufacturers to meet the challenges in advanced services, differentiation, and fast/flexible service creation, WAP selects and defines a set of open, extensible protocols and content formats as a basis for interoperable implementations.

The objectives of the WAP Forum are:

• To bring Internet content and advanced data services to digital cellular phones and other wireless terminals.

• To create a global wireless protocol specification that will work across differing wireless network technologies.

• To enable the creation of content and applications that scale across a very wide range of bearer networks and device types.

• To embrace and extend existing standards and technology wherever appropriate.

The WAP Architecture Specification is intended to present the system and protocol architectures essential to achieving the objectives of the WAP Forum. The WAP Architecture Specification acts as the starting point for understanding the WAP technologies and the resulting specifications. As such, it provides an overview of the different technologies and references the appropriate specifications for further details.

This version of the WAP Architecture continues the themes and builds on the successes of the initial WAP Architecture. Network elements remain similar in function. For example, the architecture uses performance and feature-enhancing proxies to offload processing from constrained devices, to expose features and functions of the wireless network, and to provide for network and service management. Recent versions of the architecture have been enhanced to allow for a broader selection of connection paths between clients and origin servers as necessary, for example to provide end-to-end security.

The WAP Architecture Specification itself provides a framework for a variety of protocols, features, and services. It does not mandate any specific implementation, and is therefore be considered informative.

^[1]The WAP Forum has relationships with the following standards bodies: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI), Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the European Computer Manufacturers’ Association (ECMA).

^[2]Promotional material from the WAP Forum.

^[3]Promotional material from the WAP Forum.

^[4]Copyright © 2000—2001 Wireless Application Protocol Forum Ltd. Terms and conditions of use are herewith met. One may use this document or any part of the document for educational purposes only, provided one does not modify, edit or take out of context the information in this document in any manner.